Page 128 of Alchemised

It was clear that Wagner was no alchemist, or artist, but he’d seen the process done at least a few times.

He sketched a massive array unlike anything Helena had ever seen.

Neither celestial nor elemental, it had nine source points, and in the centre a platform was suspended by which Morrough could access the body of the prisoner designated to survive.

The sacrificial victims were placed on the nine points. Morrough would open the chest cavity of the chosen recipient prisoner and place a piece of one of his own bones inside as the final component of the array. After somehow tethering their life force to that bone, he would activate the array.

The array created a pull so terrible that the sacrifices shrivelled into husks, stripped of life until it was drawn into the recipient, trapping their soul beneath the layers and layers of the others, like an insect trapped in a spiderweb.

Morrough would cut off a shard of the bone, coat it in lumithium, and leave it inside the prisoner’s body. Then he’d place the rest back inside his own.

The information fell in line with what they knew, but Helena’s mind refused to believe that such a thing could be possible.

Ilva’s story about the first Necromancer had been horrifying enough, manipulating and deceiving a multitude, but the scale made it impersonal.

This process was so intimate and intentional.

The repetition. The scope. Nine victims, over and over, tearing bone shard after bone shard each time. For power. For immortality.

This was how Kaine had been made.

“How did you survive so long, knowing all this?” Crowther asked Wagner.

Wagner smiled. “He was a selfish man. The lives of others were, to him, a resource. I am no fool. When it was a success, I ran. I knew he would try to find me someday. He would not share credit in his great discovery. I thought he had forgotten, until I woke up in Paladia. Now the world will know of me.”

He smiled craftily at Crowther, clearly anticipating being used by the Resistance to counter Morrough’s claims of power and scientific genius, but Helena couldn’t imagine anyone caring whose idea it was; Morrough was the one with the power and ability.

“How are all the Undying able to use necromancy?” she asked.

Hotten translated the question.

“Accident,” Wagner said with a barking laugh. “He never knew why.”

O NCE THE INTERVIEW WITH W AGNER was over, Helena was left at a loose end. Headquarters security was thrown into chaos after the guards failed to apprehend Ivy.

Any information Ivy knew was now considered compromised.

Crowther immediately moved the prisoners under the Alchemy Tower to a different location, somewhere south of Headquarters, and a team of alchemists went down into the warren of tunnels, trying to seal them off to keep Ivy from sneaking back in.

But when Ilva and Althorne went with Crowther for a follow-up interrogation, Wagner was found dead, hacked to bits by the reanimated corpses of the two guards stationed outside his cell. The remains had been assembled to read: CROWTHER NEXT .

Luc was still in the hospital, under constant watch. Information about his condition was kept carefully controlled. According to the daily reports, he was recovering and only needed a few more days before he’d be transferred to his rooms.

Elain was the only healer allowed to go in to see him. She was tight-lipped for the first time in her life. She would hurry in and out, retrieving medicine from the supply room, talking to Pace in a hushed voice, and then hurrying back.

Helena covered Elain’s usual shifts. Among those patients was Penny, whose leg had been too damaged for healing and had been amputated at the knee. Alister was sitting at her bedside, keeping her company when Helena pushed back the curtains.

Helena was surprised at first that Penny had so few visitors, but then she remembered that, aside from Alister, Luc and Lila were the only ones left. All the rest were still being searched for beneath the rubble.

“I should go,” Alister said, standing up. “The tribunal has follow-up questions.”

Penny nodded wordlessly, her fingers clutching the blankets on her lap.

“What tribunal?” Helena asked, sitting down when Alister had gone. “You two aren’t being punished for saving Luc, are you?”

Penny shook her head, picking at a lump in the thread of the linen sheets. “No. We just got a reprimand. I’m even supposed to get two medals. The tribunal’s for Lila.”

Helena looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

“They’re replacing Lila with Sebastian as paladin primary,” Penny said without looking up. “Lila’s probably going to be stripped of rank for compromising Luc’s safety.”

“You can’t be serious,” Helena said. “Lila has saved Luc’s life more times than—”

“I know,” Penny said sharply. “We all know, but they’re not going to do anything to Luc—he’s Principate.

So Lila takes the fall. People have been complaining for a while—I mean, they always were, because she’s a girl and paladins are supposed to be boys—but Lila always outweighed the risk before, but after that last time with the chimaera, and now …

the higher-ups see her as a liability for him.

They think that if it hadn’t been for her, Luc wouldn’t have been captured. ”

“But—”

“They’ve been doing interviews, and the thing is,” Penny continued, looking a mixture of guilt-stricken and resigned, “we all knew. I mean he tried to be subtle about it, but you could tell just looking. Especially lately, everyone thought it was all going to be over soon. I think Luc thought it’d be fine because no one cared when it was his dad and Sebastian.

But there’s always more rules for us girls, and no one under oath can say that Luc’s not compromised. Could you?”

Helena looked away.

Poor Lila. She’d straddled the impossibility of her role for years, rarely making a mistake, but now she was left paying for Luc’s.

What would happen?

Helena swallowed hard, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand. There wasn’t anything they could do about the tribunal. “How’s the leg?”

Penny seemed to shrink. “Fine,” she said too quickly.

Helena reached out slowly. “You know, sometimes the nerve endings don’t realise the amputation has happened, and it can make you feel like the leg’s still there and in pain. I can use my resonance to block it so it doesn’t feel that way.”

“Really?” Penny’s voice had a hint of desperation.

Helena set to work, but even this made her think about Lila.

As far as lost limbs went, it was a good amputation. Maier had been able to salvage as much of the leg as possible and perform a clean cut, without the rush of an emergency. “You know, you might be able to get a prosthetic.”

“I don’t think my repertoire is good enough for much,” Penny said with a bitter smile, but the strain in her expression was already clearing. “Maybe a basic one, though, so I can stay on, maybe man the radios. I don’t want to get sent off.”

“The forge-masters are very talented. Titanium bonds well for most people, and it’s a lot lighter than the old models.”

“I guess we’ll see,” Penny said.

There was silence while Helena worked, and then Penny spoke again. “Is it true, what Luc said? When Soren came to save Alister and me, was he dead?”

Helena flinched as if she’d been kicked through the skull, Soren’s name striking like an anvil. She was drowning again.

Penny’s leg wavered in Helena’s vision.

“When I first heard the rumour, I thought it was ridiculous. I was sure I would have noticed if he was dead. But sitting here, I keep thinking about it, the way he didn’t stop fighting no matter what they did to him.

He never screamed—not even when they started tearing him apart.

” Penny’s voice shook. “I think I’d rather believe he was dead. ”

Helena’s skin crawled as if those cold fingers were dragging across it. She blinked, pushing the thoughts and memories of Soren back and away, again wilfully forcing her consciousness to swerve around the wound that his memory evoked.

She knew better than to outright confess. She bit her lip for a moment. “Soren said we had to do anything, no matter what it took, to save Luc.”

Penny was quiet for a long time. “I don’t know how to feel. I know I’d be dead if he hadn’t come right then … but—” Her lips trembled. “—what if that was a test? All these years of fighting the good fight, but then in the final moment, instead of staying true, we chose the easy way.”

Helena was glad that she was nearly done working on Penny’s leg, because the conversation was making her hands shake. Easy. She hated that word.

She swallowed hard. “If one person’s actions are enough to damn everyone, then the gods are terrible, and Sol is the worst of all.”

“You don’t mean that,” Penny said sharply, catching her by the wrist, clutching at it until her fingers bit into her skin. “Look at me, Helena. You don’t mean that. It works the other way, too. Orion passed the test, and think of all the blessings that came from that.”

Penny seemed desperate to convince her.

“I remember when you first came here. We were in the same dorm. You said that Paladia was the most beautiful place in the whole world. The Shining City, you called it. You said that in Etras people didn’t really believe in the gods, but here in the North, you understood why they did, because how else could a place be so beautiful. Don’t you remember that?”

She found Helena’s hand and squeezed it.

“That’s what you said. I think you still believe that, deep down.

You were just—you were just scared and you—made a mistake, but you can repent.

If you talk to the Falcon, he makes it all so clear.

The journey, all the suffering, it’s what we need.

How else can we be purified? Even—even when it’s hard, we have to be grateful for it, because that’s what makes us pure. ”

Penny was smiling at Helena, fervently trying to convince her. “That’s why it’s better for all of us to die true to what we believe than to live on by betraying and corrupting ourselves. I know you meant well, saving us, but you should have trusted Sol.”

Helena pulled her hand free. “Penny, if I thought we’d all die, I wouldn’t be so afraid of losing. What they’ll do to us if we lose will be far worse than death.” She shook her head. “There will be nothing purifying about it.”

E VEN AFTER DAYS OF CHELATING treatment, Lila’s resonance failed to return. The Council was trying to keep the news quiet, not wanting to cause a panic. The chelators were supposed to sequester the metal in Lila’s blood to flush it out, but it wasn’t working as effectively as expected.

Shiseo had said nothing about the message Helena had sent him to the Outpost with, asked no questions, but he’d looked very relieved the first time she returned to the lab. It communicated more than words could.

They spent days analysing and re-analysing the shards and new samples of Lila’s blood, trying to determine what they were missing. Every time Helena had to leave for a shift, she always returned to find Shiseo still working. He finally fell asleep, slumped over the workstation.

Helena sat quietly, watching a flame under the glass alembic before her, steam rising in the cucurbit, collecting in the ambix and running down the tube into a vial beside it.

Elain Boyle had been made the Resistance’s lead healer earlier that day.

It was a new position that Matias had created for her.

Elain had arrived in the hospital wearing a large and ornate sunstone amulet around her neck, and now her general duties were managing and scheduling the other healers’ shifts, while she worked exclusively as Luc’s “personal” healer.

Helena told herself she didn’t care.

Her chymiatria was becoming the default for the healers. Pace had quietly created a section in the storerooms for the tonics and medicines, letting Helena’s chymiatria bear some of the load of healing.

Helena curled her fingers into a tight fist. She’d built up a large supply of ingredients since they’d recovered the ports, but she was worried about running out now that Crowther had banned her from foraging anymore.

Some could be made using imported materials, but there were a few things that were hard to get her hands on if she couldn’t gather them herself.

She sighed. She used to love the quietness of lab work—such a stark contrast with the hospital—but now it left her to her thoughts, and everything she pushed away in her mind crowded around, suffocating her.

She missed Kaine.

Whenever she thought of him, she felt as though a piece of her was missing.

The war had drilled itself into her bones, carving away at her until there was hardly anything left except what made her useful, an ideal component in an elaborate machine, but Kaine had reminded her that she was human; that not every trait and ability and quality she possessed only mattered insomuch as it was useful to someone else.

That she was allowed to breathe sometimes.

Now, in his absence, she felt herself suffocating.